A science policy for scientific information

Working since 1983 with the Department of Higher Education, first, in the science and technology library sector (from 83 to 89) and now in the science and technology museum sector, I have been associated with the development and planning of fundamental academic research activities, centered around information: professional scientific and technical information in the first case, public scientific and technical information in the second case. So, I was and I am now again, faced down with research policy problems, with science policy problems, the science being here what is called information science. In this paper, I will try to present some of the results and some of the difficulties of these policy activities.

( 1 ) Some years ago, an analogy was proposed between scientific information and blood: scientific information was said to be the blood of science. That means that the vital principle for science and for the scientist to, through, for example, his (or her) publishing activities.
(2) Among other things, communication activities play an important role in scientists' activities: more than 40% of our time is devoted to communication.
(3) Information technology which affects society in general is also affecting the research pro-Corrcçpvlldencc to. Y -F Le Coadic, CNAM, 2Y2 rue Saint-Martin, 75141 Paris Cedex 113, France. cess and specially scientific creativity. The use of expert systems in archaeology, for example, helps to form conclusions, judgements or inferences from archaeological facts. (4) A good representation of science and technology in museums, that is transfer of information through objects, posters, photographs, videos, conferences, books, labels is one of the key problems in the successful public understanding of science.
So information and its communication have great importance in science. Then, why, apparently, is scientific information for the scientist or for the public, not included in the different policies defined for science'? The scientific study of information which has suffered from this situation is, I think, a determining factor of scientific progress and of scientific literacy.

A science policy for scientific information
Is there anywhere a science policy for which the props are information science, a policy whose purpose is scientific and technical information research?
Are there national information science research programmes? Not, really, as is shown by steps taken by leading industrial countries over some 20 years. In all these countries however there exists a policy in which the prop is information technology.

I. Information science
Before analysing this situation, we must realise that speaking of a science policy for information is actually already assuming the existence of an information science.
Effectively, I believe that developing the production of information (general information, scientific and technical information, etc.) requires a science whose purpose is the study of information : nature, origin, properties and production, communication and use, processes and systems.
As early as 150 years ago, the rise of the industrial society required-I quote Friedrich Engels -&dquo;a science that might study physical properties of natural objects and means of action of the forces of nature&dquo;. Natural science, physics, was born.
Presently, this new discipline is not well structured and remains what Toulmin [1] called a would-be discipline. One of the reasons is that in the information field (from mass-media to telecommunications, from libraries to museums), theoretical approaches have always been preceded by practical, technical developments. For example, in the last 60 years, three theoretical approaches emerged a long time after technological revolutions occurred in the field. They are: the information theory, the mass-media theory and the theory of interactivity: -In the first case, information is a physical concept which emerges in a technological field: the central question is that of the yield of the transmission channel.
-In the second case, new techniques appear: radio, television. Transmission of information is transformed into mass-communication.
-Then, as the analysis of mass-media becomes more and more sophisticated, a new technological revolution is beginning: information technology, satellites ... Hence, always the primacy of technology over science and the primacy of technology policy over science policy: in all the leading industrial countries, we find policies for which information technology (but not information science) is the prop.
Technology plays, for sure, a determining role in our societies. As Georges Thill [2] said, we are presently moving in a technonature. Our societies are increasingly dependent on the use of electronic and photonic information and communication techniques. These techniques provide industries, governments, people with basic tools for communicating and using information. (2) In Japan, the 5th generation computer project is aimed at mobilising researchers for conceiving &dquo;intelligent&dquo; machines. (3) In the United Kingdom, the national programme was the Alvey program. The response of the economic and social sciences was the Pic-r program. But the work of OSTI (and its successor the British Library R&D Department) should be recognised as constituting a National Information Science Research Programme.
(4) In France, the electronic filière was a research programme aimed at providing support for the French electronic industry. (5) Finally in Europe, the ESPRIT programme is very explicitly a technological research programme. The FAST n communication sub-programme was the timid response to this gigantic programme.
Facing this situation, it was not very easy for us in France to launch a basic research programme in information science. It was also difficult to find the approximate structure of this new discipline. A co-word analysis was done on multidisciplinary databases [see e.g. 3]. It revealed the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge about information properties and communication processes (Fig. 1). In fact, we find research coming from diverse disciplinary traditions. Structurally, information science is one of these new interdisciplines which witness collaboration between a number of mono-disciplines in a signif-icant way: linguistics, psychology, economics, law, politics, sociology, anthropology, computer science, electronics, logic, statistics, mathematics, history, epistemology, philosophy and the mother-discipline, library science and its first information technology, the book (Fig. 2). (For general information, the same scheme is applicable. The discipline is called communication sciences, the mother-discipline being then journalism and the technology, the newspaper.) Each discipline applies its concepts, explanatory procedures and theories to the intellectual content of information science, i.e. information.
As a consequence, the problems that arise when we study information are concerned with the mutual receipt of concepts from different branches of science. Each team employs about two or three full-time equivalent scientists, two or three doctoral students and one or two technicians. Each team receives around ;E 10,000 per year for current expenses (salaries are not included).  -For the first, we know that the growth of a discipline is possible only if many opportunities to communicate the scientific information produced are offered to scientists. They need formal and informal communication tools.
-For the second, the creation of authoritative reference groups and journals has a significant part to play in the maturation of a developing discipline. But they must be adapted to the present state of the discipline. So we choose to create: -an annual summer school; -an annual Anglo-French meeting (with the collaboration of the R&D Department of the British Library). In 1989, the programme was evaluated by a research group specialising in evaluation studies of research programmes. They use qualitative methods such as interviews, quantitative methods and, again, co-words analysis. So it was possible to measure in part the impact of the programme on knowledge construction in the field and to compare its production with the production of other French and British research at the same time. A difference from information science can be noted here. Information technology is not, at the moment, heavily used in the field. But we must realise that the electronic museum is not a futurist view. Indeed, use of electronic texts, of electronic images and of electric sounds in exhibits, use of image databanks, computerisation of museum collections are the first indicators of the progressive introduction of information technology in this sector.
If you have the opportunity to visit the Cite des sciences et de l'industrie at La Villette in Paris, I think that you will be surprised by the number of electronic screens and the relative absence of scientific or technical objects.
If you correlate this trend with the result of a recent study on the cultural practices of French people where it is said that these practices have been mainlly introduced by the use of the new information and communication technologies, I think that the future is not so distant. We are entering upon a new phase in man's culture, the screen and walkman culture.

What about our research programme?
Again, before preparing the programme, we have done a co-word analysis (not yet completed) using multidisciplinary French databases. The mapping of the research areas is presented in Fig.   3.
Study of attitudes and perceptions appear to he the main research area followed by the important group of technical research oriented towards the conservation and the presentation of scientific and technical objects.
Keeping the same interdisciplinary structure of the discipline, and adding only education and  replacing the &dquo;logic, stat, math&dquo; group by the &dquo;chemistry, physics, biology&dquo; group to take into account the curative techniques, we obtain again a simplified representation of the field and propose to use it to determine some of the orientations of the programme (Fig. 4).
After some discussions between scientists and science policy makers from the Ministry of Research and Technology and the Ministry of Culture, we were able to define a programme that we are now launching: its title is &dquo;Scientific and technical Museology&dquo;. The objective of this programme is to support the construction of fundamental knowledge on what we called scientific and technical culture on one side, and on history and the epistemology of science and technology on the other.
It seems important to us to create this sub-programme in order to attract communities of historians of science and technology and of epistemologists given the great interest of historical and epistemological works for the understanding of science.
Another important feature is that we impose a necessary link, a partnership, between scientists and museums or professionals in science centres to try to improve the scientific as well as the professional activities.
The overall research will, we hope, bring results : (1) Confonning the core specialities of tlre field: mainly socio-cllltural themes such as: -message elaboration and perception mass communication, audience evaluation of exhibits but also such traditional themes as: -conservation, preservation and presentation techniques management techniques with, we can expect, important use of computer techniques.
(2) Del'eloping peripheral specialities, mainly psychological themes such as: Concerning the main goals of the programme, we have decided: -to create or develop also a limited number of research teams; -and to create a scientific environment for the expected growing community of public information scientists. The evaluation will be done continuously by integrating in a database all the documents produced by scientists, experts, committees and by doing co-work analysis on the content.

Conclusion
Despite the increasing impact of scientific and technical information and communication activities, technologies, methodologies and theories on society, there are nowhere science policies for scientific information either for the professional, or for the public. In recent years, information technology has been the prop of technology policies in the information field leading to a depressed information science. So it is necessary to instigate research programmes not only directed as presently to information technology, but also to information science.
In the professional information field as well as in the public information field, technology alone does not solve information problems.